Lots of people tweeting and posting today that Swein Forkbeard was crowned king on Christmas Day 1013. E.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-25341754
But is it true? I couldn't recall having seen this date before, and it's not in my research notes for The Norman Conquest. Nor is Christmas Day 1013 mentioned in Swein's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
The only contemporary narrative source for Swein's reign is the E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It says [my paraphrase] that in 1013 Swein landed at Sandwich in Kent 'before the month of August', went round East Anglia to the Humber, then up the Trent to Gainsborough, where the people of that region submitted. Later he went south to Oxford, where there were more submissions, and then east to London, where he besieged the English king Ethelred the Unready. Swein then went back north to his ships, 'and the whole nation accepted him as their undisputed king'.
Then London submitted... Then Swein demanded tribute and supplies for the winter... Then for a time Ethelred was with his fleet in London, and his wife Emma crossed the sea to Normandy.
'Then at Christmas the king [i.e. Ethelred] left the fleet for the Isle of Wight, and remained there for that festival, afterwards crossing the sea.'
In other words, Swein seems to have been accepted as king well before Christmas, and there's no mention of a coronation.
Anyone have any evidence to the contrary?
PS It's not in Adam of Bremen or John of Worcester, I've checked. My working hypothesis is that the belief Swein became king on Christmas day arises from a lazy misreading by some later historian of the section of the ASC discussed above.
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